Pierre Atlas: 2nd Amendment isn't about protection from tyrannical government

My columns from December and January on the topic of guns elicited responses from many readers making the same basic assertion: the Second Amendment is not really about hunting or even personal defense, but rather guarantees us the means to resist the government should it become "tyrannical." We need AR-15s or even fully automatic weapons, some suggested, in order to fight the government's military and law enforcement personnel should that day come.

Practically speaking, this argument is ludicrous. Our 21st-century armed forces have shoulder-fired missiles and tanks, helicopter gunships and F-16s, tactical nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers. The idea that ordinary citizens could "resist" such a force with semi-automatic rifles and 30-round magazines is unrealistic, to say the least. Paranoid fantasies portray "the government" as some alien entity bent on turning America into a totalitarian state. But as we were tragically reminded in 1995 when anti-government domestic terrorists blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the government is us: ordinary people, even neighbors, who serve their cities, states and nation.

The suggestion that the Second Amendment gives us a constitutional right to resist the nation's laws (however unpopular) with force is dead wrong. One reason the framers replaced the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution in 1787 was the inability of that older system to aid Massachusetts in putting down Shays' Rebellion -- an armed insurrection by men who believed their government had become tyrannical. Shays' Rebellion was on everyone's minds at the Philadelphia convention, and the Constitution they crafted empowers the national government to suppress any armed resistance to its authority.

Article I, Section 8 explicitly gives Congress the power "to provide for calling for the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." Article III, Section 3 declares that taking up arms, or "levying war," against the United States constitutes treason.

In order to get the Constitution ratified, the framers promised to amend the document with a Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment became part of that package. What was its original intent? The "Dissent of the Pennsylvania Minority," written by anti-federalists concerned about the powers to be granted to the new national government, is telling. Here is how those constitutional skeptics understood gun rights in 1787: "That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own state and the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals." Significantly, these original pro-gun activists did not suggest a right to own weaponry in order to defy the government.

A few years after Shays' Rebellion, another group of men used their guns to resist what they believed was a tyrannical government. Only this time the country was operating under the Constitution, not the weaker Articles of Confederation. In 1794, proclaiming that the federal government had no right to tax whiskey, hundreds of armed men in western Pennsylvania went on a rampage, terrorizing local tax inspectors and a U.S. Marshal. President George Washington called up an army of 13,000 men from four states and, leading the force himself on horseback, put down the Whiskey Rebellion.

No, the Second Amendment has never guaranteed individuals a right to use their arms to resist the government or its laws. As I learned myself when I enlisted in the Army more than 25 years ago, all personnel joining the Armed Forces swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Domestic enemies are those who would attempt to overthrow, or resist with violence, the government of the United States.

Our nation's founders were confident that the tyranny of King George could not be repeated in a republic with formal separation of powers and checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. The way to change an unpopular law in a democracy is through political and judicial processes, not by armed violence or insurrection. The founders believed this strongly; they even wrote it into the Constitution more than 225 years ago.

Atlas is an associate professor of political science and director of The Richard G. Lugar Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian University. Contact him at patlas@marian.edu.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Email this article

Pierre Atlas: 2nd Amendment isn't about protection from tyrannical government

My crecent olumns on guns elicited responses from many readers making the same basic assertion: the Second Amendment is not really about hunting or even personal defense, but rather guarantees us the